A young socialist group created under the name of “Red Guards” hunts down “capitalist truckers” guilty of the “Four olds” which are old customs, old habits, old thoughts or old culture. This is seen when the village chief comes to get Fugui to get rid of the puppets, as everyone knows they are part of the old culture and although the puppets remind Jiazhen of her son Yongqing, the family burns them. The audience is shown that the Communist Party has infiltrated homes and propaganda is even present in the wedding song between Fengxia and Erxi. We know that at this time, the Revolution was at its peak. Education is portrayed as not being important and this turns out to cause disaster because later in the film, during Fengxia's delivery, the doctors are all gone and only the students are left. We notice that these students are all young women and that the Communist Party is trying to make gender roles equal for these young women. However, it is clear that since doctors were the only ones trained to help, this puts the death of Fengxia who dies of blood loss after giving birth to her son Mantou. Fengxia who is mute and considered in China as a handicap in Chinese culture as a "dishonor" since the handicap was considered that no doctor or nurse would treat them, manly because they did not know how. This part of the film is symbolic for this part of China at that time because it shows the two children, Youqing and Fengxia, being victims of the Communist Party police. At the end, when Erxi buys a box full of young chicks for her son, which they decide to keep in the trunk formerly used for shadow puppet accessories. Involves the history of puppetry in Chinese culture as it was created for an emperor who had lost a loved one and so an official made a shadow puppet of her and presented it to the emperor, he was delighted to be able to see his beloved again..